Case study to spread awareness on heart attack signs
Back when she was just 14, Ceirra Zeager, from Pennsylvania, US, thought her pounding heart was a sign of the excitement from attending her first school dance with a boy.
However, it turned out to be a heart attack, caused by a congenital heart defect.
Now 23, Zeager is sharing her story to raise awareness about heart attack signs, as a volunteer for the American Heart Association.
"Butterflies" turned into "elephant" on chest
After she got back home from the dance, Zeager continued to experience a racing heart. "I was thinking, 'Is this how it is to have feelings?'" Zeager told Insider.
The next morning, Zeager's "butterflies" had morphed into a deep fatigue and heaviness in her arm. Her vision narrowed, her ear flooded with warmth, and she collapsed.
"Before I knew it, I was on the floor," Zeager said. "It felt like an elephant was on my chest."
Misdiagnosis as 'teenage anxiety'
At the hospital, Zeager's symptoms were not treated like an emergency situation. She waited for hours to be seen and had also developed "an intense burning pain" in her upper arm.
A doctor told her that she likely had "teenage anxiety."
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Blockage in or around her heart
Still, the doctor recommended her to visit a children's hospital for a safer side. There she got some tests done that identified a blockage in or around her heart. She underwent a cardiac catheterization procedure to identify the location of the clot.
When Zeager awoke from the surgery, she saw her sister crying. "You had a heart attack," her sister said.
‘Hole in her heart’
Later, tests also revealed that Zeager had elevated lipoprotein A. This means her red blood cells are "extra sticky," which lead to a blood clot. She was also born with a hole in her heart, called patent foramen ovale (PFO). The hole allowed the clot to get lodged in her coronary artery, leading to the heart attack.
Treatment and another surgery
Zeager's treatment included surgery to repair the hole, six months on blood thinners, and a several-week long hospital stay.
About seven years later, Zeager experienced extreme fatigue. A cardiologist told her she needed an open-heart surgery to repair a leaky heart valve that had been damaged during the heart attack.
Zeager underwent the surgery in February 2021. Still, her ejection fraction — a measure of heart strength — is around 44%. A healthy range is 50% to 70%, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
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